One of the best things about preparing to teach classes is the amount of reading that I get to do. Am required to do, in fact. I imagine it's something like being the menu tester at a superb restaurant, or a product quality inspector at a very good chocolate factory, somewhere in Belgium, say, where …
HTFIIANYAA?! (or, How On Earth Is It A New Year Already Again??)
I did vaguely plan to do my usual signing off for the year post at the end of December, but then it turned out it was actually January. Not sure how that happened, but there you go. Which does at least spare me the embarrassment of doing a post summing up all the things that I …
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Bad Book Covers
I’ve talked before about bad book titles, but I came across this article on the truly horrible covers for some Wordsworth Classics and decided It Needed To Be Shared More Widely. (Having said that, I found the link on Beattie’s Book Blog, which numbers its subscribers at least an order of magnitude higher than mine …
Countdown to the Competition – five weeks to NPD
It’s getting closer – only five weeks to go. This week’s word cloud is made from the contents pages of Hannah Mettner’s Fully Clothed and So Forgetful, which took out the Jessie Mackay Award (aka the Best First Poetry Collection prize) at this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Again, you’d just about buy this for …
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Countdown to the Competition – six weeks to NPD
This week’s word cloud is made from the Contents pages of Elizabeth Smither’s lovely Night Horse, which took out Best Poetry Collection at this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. (The colours of the cloud are taken from the book cover, because I like to play with that sort of thing.) And while it’s true that you …
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A Dark Feathered Art 